


Natural Order

by Alyndra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:58:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyndra/pseuds/Alyndra
Summary: Billie's got two souls to reap, Apocalypse or no Apocalypse.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For @NoelWillet for the #spnxmas exchange!

It was a reaper's job to harvest each human soul in turn, from ages lost to history until some future day on which the last spark of humanity would sputter and flare out. 

That day, if the Apocalypse kept on track, wasn't looking too distant. 

There were two souls in a self-set explosion for Billie to reap, on a day like many others and yet not. Mother and daughter, hunters. Billie had to step over several hellhound carcasses to get to them. 

Trouble. 

"I know I'm dead. I just want to know, are Sam and Dean going to make it?" The younger soul asked insistently. 

"That's their story now. Yours lies beyond," Billie explained. 

"Bullshit. It ain't unreasonable to want to know if all this was worth it," the older soul argued. 

"Do you think it was?" Billie asked, keeping her face impassive. This was why the usual rule was one-to-one; let the freshly deceased outnumber you and they'd start thinking they could gang up on you, too.

"If Lucifer's dead…" the younger, again. 

Billie couldn't quite hide her surprise. "He's not."

The elder rolled her eyes. "Well, a'course he ain't, yet. It's only been, what, five minutes?"

The younger—Jo—sensed Billie's uncertainty, and pressed. "Don't you know what he's trying to do tonight?"

Billie shook her head. "He wants to destroy you all. Does it matter, the specifics?"

"Yes, if Sam and Dean can stop him," Jo said staunchly. "Then yeah, it all matters a lot."

"Tell you what," the other—Ellen—said. "We'll fill you in on what's going on tonight, if we can stay just long enough to see it out."

Billie hesitated. Exceptions to the rules practically never turned out well. And yet…it was the apocalypse. A time for exceptions if there ever was one. 

"Very well," she allowed.

"He's trying to raise Death," Jo told her.

"Sam and Dean are going to kill him, with Samuel Colt's pistol," Ellen said. 

So they followed the Winchesters, Billie and the two souls in her charge. The Michael Sword shot the Devil, who didn't die. Instead he completed his ritual, and Death himself was raised, chained and bound to Lucifer's whims. 

Billie was the first to see him. 

He looked around at Billie, at the living Winchesters and the Morningstar, at the crowd of freshly dead corpses and the freed souls milling confusedly around them, and finally at Jo and Ellen, white-faced, grief-stricken. 

"I see I shall have much to attend to. Don't you all have places to be?" He asked dryly. 

Billie bowed low. "Sir. Your pardon, sir. We'll be on our way immediately."

She turned and started to hustle her charges back the way they had come, but Ellen refused to be hustled. She looked at the chains around Death's wrists, and then she said, slowly, "Sir. I don't know you'll be in a position to do much. But Sam and Dean Winchester, they're good boys, the best. They'll stop all this, if anyone can. If you can help them, please. Please, sir, do what you can for them."

And then Ellen started to glow white. She didn't even turn to look at Billie; usually Billie had to show folks the door, but Ellen went right up like a candle, and another heartbeat later she was gone. 

Billie was still holding Jo's arm. Jo didn't try to shake loose, but her voice easily crossed the distance between them and Death. "We died to give them a shot that didn't work. I don't know if it was worth it. I just know I'd do it again if I had to."

After that, she let Billie guide her into the light waiting for her, finally. 

There were more souls waiting for Billie, after the time she'd just taken here. But for the first time in centuries, she found herself unready to face her work. These were no ordinary times, that much was true. But did that mean extraordinary measures? Or should she have stuck to her place, never bargained with the souls entrusted to her care, even over a few minutes?

Billie couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the exceptions to the rules she'd made today would come back to haunt her, in the fullness of time.

Winchesters or no Winchesters, there was an order to how things were supposed to be, and it was Billie's job to uphold that order.


End file.
